The present invention relates to a pharmaceutical composition for treating nephritic disease, which contains 24,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol as an active ingredient, and more in detail, to a pharmaceutical composition for treating uremic disease which contains 24,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol as an active ingredient.
In the cases of chronic renal failure, the pertinent treatment is carried out according to each stage of the disease. Namely, in the compensatory stage, (1) dietetics and (2) conservative treatment mainly comprising the pharmaceutical treatments for improving the abnormally morbid state accompanying chronic renal failure are mainly carried out, and in the noncompensatory stage (the uremic stage) where the abnormally morbid state cannot be improved by the above-mentioned conservative treatment, methods for cleaning the blood of the patient mainly comprising the dialytic treatment and renal transplantation are the nucleus of the treatment of chronic renal failure.
Although the remarkable development of dialytic treatment in recent years has improved the results of the dialytic treatment, many of the patients suffering from the chronic renal failure have a strong desire of avoiding the dialytic treatment if possible or of postponing the starting of the dialytic treatment as far as possible. In order to meet the strong desire of the patients, the development of a new treatment of the chronic renal failure has been demanded. Such a development of a new treatment meets the social requirement for suppressing the increase of the treatment cost for carrying out the dialysis with the recent increase of the number of patients treated by dialysis.
As a result of the present inventors' study on the endogenous substances which exist in the healthy human body and of which the safety to human being has been verified, it has been found by the present inventors that 24,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol (hereinafter referred to as the present substance or 24,25-(OH).sub.2 -D.sub.3) has an antinephritic activity, and based on the above-mentioned finding, the present invention has been attained.